THE SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
35 
understand their action without more ado about 
their chemistry. 
The inflammables, or our fourth division, are 
sulphur and phosphorus; both used ip njakie.^ 
friction matches. The phosphorus urst takes 
sire by rubbing, an4 sulolmr burn- 
ing. hfov, the smoke arising from these is on- 
ly the sulpluir and phospiiorus unued to the vi- 
tal part of the common air. This compound of 
vital air, or oxygen, as it is ca ls 1, and ind im- 
Biables, forms acids, called sulphuric and phos- 
phoric acids. So if you burn coal or carbon, it 
£s' well known you form fixed air, or carbonic 
acid. That is, by burning, the coal or carbon 
unites with the oxygen or vital part of common 
air, and forms carbonic acid. The heavy, dead- 
ly air, which arises from burning charcoal, has 
^1 the properties of an acid. And now let us 
see what these properties are. 
All acids unite or combine with the alkalies, 
alkaline earths, and the metals. When acids 
and alkalies do thus unite, they each lose their 
distinguishing pre; erties. They forup a ^ew 
substance, called a salt. It is very important 
you should fix well in year mind this definition 
of a salt. You are not to confine your idea of a 
salt to common salt. That is a capital exam- 
ple of the whole class. It is soda, an alkaH, 
united to an acid, or chlorine, or, to speak in the 
terms the most intelligibjej to muriatic acid. So 
saltpetre is a salt. It is potash united to aqua- 
fortis. Yet in saltpetre you perceive neither 
■potash nor aquafortiis. These have united — 
their characters are neutralized by each other. 
They have formed a neutral salt. Qur list of 
substances fou^d in plants, is thus reduced from 
things v.’hid£. you did riot know, to things \tdiich 
you do know; and so we have saved the trou- 
ble of learning uore of their chemistry. 
We have reduced the airy or volatile into 
•water, formed of oxygen and hydrogen ; of vola- 
tile alkali, formed of nitrogen ana hydrogen ; or 
in'o acids, as the carbonic, formed of oxygen 
and carbon — as the sulphuric, formed of oxygen 
and sulphur — as the phosph’orkj formed of oxy- 
gen and phosphorus-; and having thus got water 
and acids, these unite with all the alkaline, ear- 
thy, and metallic bodies, and form salts. To 
give you new examples of these, I may mention 
Glauber’s salts and Epscrn salts. Glauber’s 
salts is formed ofso^ and sulphuric aeidj Ep.- 
som salts, of magnesia and sulphuric- acid; 
alum, of alumina or clay, and sulphuric acid ; 
green vitriol, of iron and sulphuric acid ; white 
vitriol, of ziuc and sulphuric acid; plasterofPa- 
ris, of lime and sulphuric acid; bones, of lime 
and phosphoric aeid ; chalk and limestone, of 
lime and carb-jnic acid. These are all exam- 
ples of salts — that is, an acid, or a substance 
acting the part of an aeid, united to an alkali, 
metal, or earth. 
We have thus gone over, in a very general 
■way, enough of chemistry for any one to under- 
Etand the chemical nature uf manure. You see, 
reader, that with common attention, bestowed 
for an evening’s reading, one may learn these 
chemical terms and their meaning.. And now, 
having learned this first lesson, let us review the- 
ground gone over, and fi?: once and for all these 
first principles in our minds. Let us do this by 
a practical application of the knowledge we 
have gained. 
' Let us analyze a plant. Do not be startled 
at the word. To analyze, means to separate a 
compound substance into the several substanc- 
es which form it. This may be done by a very 
particular and minute, or by a more general di- 
vision. It may be done, for our present pur- 
pose, by separating the several substances of a 
plant into classes of compounds. Yku areal- 
ready chemist enough to undertake this mode of 
analysis; in truth, you hav'e already done it 
again and again. For our purpose, the ancient 
chemists had a very good division of all matter 
into four elements — fire, air, earth, and water. 
Now, by fire you separate plants into the other 
three elements. You are, reader, though per- 
haps you do net know it, somewhat of a practi- 
cal chemist. Whenever you have burned a 
charcoal-pit, what did vou ? You separated the 
wood into air, vrater, and earth. Y'ou drove off' 
by heat or fire the airy or volatile parts of the 
plant; you left its carb m or coal : if you had 
burnt this, you would have left ashes. Now, 
these ashes are the earthy parts of plants. If 
vou burn a green stick of wood, you drive ofi' 
first its w.tter aq-i volatile parts, whi-.b form 
soot. Y\)u burn its carbon, and leave its ashes 
or salts. So that, by simply burning, you re- 
duce the substance or elements of plants to wa- 
ter, carbon, salts. 
All plants, then, without exception, contain 
the several substances in our list above, as wa- 
ter, carbon, and salts. To apply this knowl- 
edge to manure, we must sa}'' a word on the 
form in which some of these, which we call the 
elements of plants, exist in them. The sap is 
water ; it holds dissolved in itcQcp^e isalts of the 
plant.' This sap’ of iuice forms a pretty large 
proporti m of the roots — say seventy-five to eigh- 
ty parts in one hundred of potatoes, turneps, 
beets, &c. This may be called the water of 
vegetation. If we dry beet-root, or any other 
plant, we merely drive off this water ol vegeta- 
.tios. Now what have we lefti To go back to 
our process of analysis, let us efiar the dried 
root. We drive ofi more water and volatile 
parts. This water did not exist as such in the 
plant. It existed there as hydiogen and oxygen 
gas. Now, this word gas is a chemical term, 
and it means any substance in vapor, which 
cas.nGt be condensed into a liquid er solid at 
common temperatures. Difierent gases may 
unite, and so become solids or liquids. Steam 
is not gas, for it is the vapor of water, and im- 
mediately returns to the state of water, below 
2l2 degrees. Perfect steam is invisible ; so are 
most gases. The air we breathe is composed of 
two gases, oxygen and nitrogen. We do not 
see them — we cannot, by cooling or compres- 
sion, make air take other shape than invisible 
air. This is the general property of gas as di.s- 
tinguished Iroin vapor or steam. Oxygen and 
hydrogen in plants exist in Just the proportions 
to form water, but we do not know tkatthey are 
united in these proportions. We havecompell- 
ed them to unite by heating the substance or 
root. The carbon is by this same process con- 
sumed, and you know, has thus formed carbonic 
acid. Besides this, a portion of the carbon 
unites with some of the hydrogen of the plant. 
This forms light, inflammable air. Now you 
may collect this light, inflammable air, in any 
stagnant water where plants are decaying, De- 
cay gives exactly the same products as are form- 
ed in making charcoal. Decay is only slow 
CO nbustion or barning; no matter whether we 
char the plapt of leave it to decay; we obtain 
exactly the same products as we did by our ana- 
lysis, that is, carbon and salts. 
But iiecause there is not heat enough, we 
leave by decay a portion of the hydrogen and 
oxygen still united to the coal. A slow mould- 
ering fii’e leaves products more like -hose of de- 
cay. Decay is a slow mouldering fife, hence 
the products of the decay of plants are very apt- 
ly termed mould. It is the product of a mould- 
ering fire— that is, an imperceptible union of 
the oxygen ol the air with the carbon of the 
plant,— a union so slow that it giv'es out neith- 
er heat nor light. And yet it is in its results the 
same as if fire had actually been seen and felt. 
Mould contains, then, a jiart of the carbon, oxy- 
gen, and h\krogen; or, if you like the terms 
belter, mould of soil consists of the water and 
coal and salts of the plants. Mould is truly 
manure. If the mould of soil, as it has thus 
been defined, were separated from the earlhy^ 
portions of soil, it would deprive that soil of the 
power of growing crops. Here, then, we come 
to a broad distinction between soil and manure. 
The soil is the earth on which plants gro w. The 
mould is the manure of that soil. The soil is 
the earthy; the mould, that is, the carbon and 
salts together, with the elements of wmter, are 
the vegetable part of arable land. But though 
the earthy part, the soil, as it is usually calle ', 
acts as a support, ' on which plants grow, it does 
not play a merely mechanical part. It has a 
distinct, decided, and important action upon the 
manure. The action is chiefly chemical ; and 
the fact that soils and manures do mutually af- 
fect the growing plant, is proved by the circum- 
stance, that the first {flants which grew, derived 
their salts from the earth. 
But this chemic-il acti on of soil does not be- 
long to the p;esenl discussion. vYe can under- 
stan i what manures are, without deciding how 
they act. We can theorize and guess about the 
how of their action when we have learned what 
they are. That is chjefly what the farmer wants 
to know. He wants to know w.hat manure is, 
and what is likely to act as a manure. To these 
points we shall confine our present remarks. 
Pointing out the great principles applicable to 
all manures, the nature of soils, and the manner 
in which they affect manures, must be left for 
another essa\'. The vegetable or manure part 
of soil alone istq be now considered. Consid- 
er, now, reader, the great results to which our 
analysis ha.s' led us ; that a slow, mouldering 
fire gives us the same products as are formed by 
decay ; that this is only a sjow, mouldering fire, 
and that raqulJ, its prqduct, is the natural ma- 
nure of piants. ‘ l£ follows, that whatever sub- 
stance produces mould, that is, wau'r, carbon, 
and salts, may be used instead of this natural 
manure. Among the salts found in mouldy 
some are volatile^ and are easily dissolved by 
w^ter. Others are fixed, that is, not evaporating 
easily, or not at all, and are quite insoluble in 
water! Now the first, or volatile and soluble, 
first act when used in manure. They act quick 
and are quickly done. The fixed and insoluble 
act slower ; they last longer. The volatile ac£ 
in the early stages of growth : the fixed in the 
later periods. The great difierence in the ac- 
tion of manures, depends alrngst entirely upon 
the salts which they contain. These are the 
most important and essential. It is not so much 
the vegetable mould of manure that you want, 
as the 'salts which it contains. This" is a well 
settled principle. Land which has undergone 
the skinning process — old, worn out and run 
out land, still contains a ye-ry large portion of 
vegetable mailer; the coal or carbon of mould 
without its salts. ' Give tiiis worn-out land salts, 
and you may by these alone bring it back no; 
only to its first virgin freshness, but you may 
even by salts alone make it fairer and richer 
than it was before man ever cultivated it. 
Too much sti ess has been all along laid upon 
the kind of-soil. Go now to “ Flob^” in West 
Cambridge ; no better farms or firmers, look 
the world through. Ask any of these practical 
men whether the sandy and gravelly soil of Old 
Cambridge Common, or even of Seekonk Plain, 
can he mad.g to bear as rich crops as their land J 
They will tell you, yea. If your land will hold 
manure, muck it well, and it will be as good. S' 
Now, this holding of manure belongs to the 
subject of soils, and throwing that oat pf con- 
sideration, it is found that even lands which do 
not hold manure, which have been worn out 
and exhausted by cropping, hold yet a<;reat 
deal of insoluble coal or mould. They want 
salts, and something which will make this in- 
ert, dead vegetable matter of the soil, active. 
The mould is active in proportion as it is more 
or les? dissolved by water, JMould consists of 
two parts; one is dissolved, though only in a 
light degree, by water; the other is not dissolv- 
ed by water. Some substances, however, do 
render mould very easily dissolved by water. 
Hence, if you reflect a moment on these facts, 
it will be seen that mould itself, being valuable 
in proportion to the ease with which waterdis- 
solvea it, that whatever substance so enables 
mould to dissolve, may be added to it, and thus 
increase its value. Now the things which do 
this are the alkalies, soda, potash, and ammo- 
nia. 
These principles being well settled, we may 
enter on the consideration of each difl'erent ma- 
*The reader will bear in ruind that Dr. Dana uses 
"m'rck” as a general term for manure— not iiie;\nin;T 
simply the muck of the meadow. — Dp. ~ 
